Jayne Anne Phillips was born in Buckhannon, West Virginia. She majored in English at West Virginia University before getting her MFA in fiction from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1978. Her writing has been translated and published in twelve languages.

She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, a Bunting Fellowship from the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College, a Howard Foundation Fellowship, and was a 2009 National Book Award finalist.

Jayne Anne has held teaching positions at several colleges and universities, including Harvard, Williams, Boston University, and Brandeis. She is currently Professor of English and Director of the MFA program in creative writing at Rutgers Newark, the State University of New Jersey. She and her husband have two sons.

Books

Lark and Termite [novel] (Knopf, 2009), National Book Award finalist, National Book Critic’s Circle Award finalist